Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Poll Update - Abacus, Ekos, and the Debates

There's two new polls out for the Ontario election, both showing different results.

First up, everyone's favourite pollster, EKOS Research, puts the race at a low 3.5% spread between the Ontario Liberals and Progressive Conservatives, 34.9% for the OLP and 31.4% for the PCs. The NDP sit at a comfortably high 24.7%, while the Greens sit with 7.6%.

In my projection, that would give the Liberals 55 seats to the Hudak PC's 30, and the NDP grab 22. My issue stems around the high result Ekos gives to the Liberals in Toronto (45%), while my projection would give them only 38%. I've heard it before that it's possible the Liberal vote in the GTA and urban centres is solidifying, while the rural votes are being lost to the PCs - which means I may need to tweak my projection system.

Ekos also polled federal voting intentions, which was a nice surprise. There, they had 36.9% support the Conservatives, 29.9% support the NDP, 25.4% support the Liberals, and 7% supporting the Greens. This would net the Conservatives 55 seats, 27 for the NDP, and 24 for the Liberals. Why such a large bump up for the Liberals? Well, any drop in the vote for the Conservatives = Liberals picking up GTA seats, so long as they stay above 25%.

Moving on, Abacus finds the opposite results, with the PCs leading by 4% over the Liberals, 37-33, while the NDP sit with 23% and the Greens with 6%. That's a change of -4 for the Tories, +1 for the Grits, and +3 for the NDP. In terms of seats, the Conservatives would win 47, the Liberals 40, and the NDP 20. That's down from the 62-27-18 spread from the last Abacus poll.

Speaking of that poll, for this last poll Abacus did their poll in two methods - the first being traditional online polling, the second being their weird rating thing from before.

The second method showed 38% for the PCs, 30% for the Liberals, 25% for the NDP, and 5% Greens. That's a big difference for both Liberals and Dips, so maybe we can designate something of a bias such polls would have, if more come out anyways.

That would give the PCs a majority government of 59 seats, to a tied vote of 24 seats each for the Liberals and NDP. But, since we're not adding the poll done by this method to my projection, it doesn't change anything.

On to the debates - they're tonight, on CBC at 6:30PM. I won't be liveblogging but I will give a full account tonight at some point, or at least tomorrow morning. Make sure you watch though, and keep an eye out for Horwath's new cane....